Last week, I shared a short video on Twitter with a cool video trick where my hand comes out of the screen to help a student. I had a quite a few people asking me how it was done, so I thought I would make a quick tutorial.

Online teaching "hack" using #GreenScreen ...this way you can really "connect" with your students via #GoogleMeet 💻🤣

It's quite an easy trick... it's just about working out the layer order and the camera angles. The first thing I did was take a screenshot of a Google Meet screen and replace the camera screen with a green mask using Google Drawings. I then asked my son to help me record a short video with the Chromebook in front of him. It should look a bit like this...

After that, I had to film myself with a green screen behind me (I had to use a blue towel because all of my video equipment is at school) and a green screen in front me, in line with the bottom of the Chromebook screen. I then had to film myself, carefully pointing towards where the CTRL key would be in the edit...

The last layer was a picture of my living room, which has become my new "Online Learning Classroom"...

Then, it's time to put it all into WeVideo for the edit. Firstly, I had to remove all the green and blue from the clips and then resize them so that they all fit into shape. My timeline looked a little bit like this...

My "Learning Online Classroom" goes at the bottom, lined up with the Chromebook screen. On top of that is the student with his Chromebook... and then on top that goes my video, with a now transparent background. It needs to be carefully placed to line up with the Chromebook screen and so that the finger points more or less towards the CTRL key.Finally, the result should look a bit like this...

If you want to try it and get stuck, just send me an email to ryangornall13@gmail.com and I'll try and help... Good luck!

The phrase "I Love You to the Moon and Back" from the popular children's book "Guess How Much I Love You" by Sam McBratney was the starting point for this project. It's such a beautiful book to read and share with young students about how Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare try to find ways to measure the unmeasurable love that they feel for each other. Therefore, for Father's Day this year (in Spain it's celebrated on 19th March, the day of Saint Joseph), I wanted to capture this moment with a special video message, using WeVideo.

It was really easy to do, and only really required a few objects: a step ladder, a green screen to cover it, and a few clamps to keep it in place... the rest was made using WeVideo stock media and text animations.The set up should look something like this...

The most important thing is getting the camera in the right place for it to look right. I had to try it a few times to get it right, but once everything is in position I was able to film all of my students really quickly.All I asked my students to do was:

crouch down and climb up the step ladder 3 steps (not too dangerous),

touch the moon (I told them where it would be),

and finally look towards the camera...

Easy! Then, all I had to do was edit it...

My WeVideo timeline consisted of 7 layers... firstly, the moon background video which is available in the WeVido Essentials Library. Above that goes the ladder illustration, which most closely resembled the size and shape of my real ladder. The next 4 layers are the different text elements that are timed to appear with the students actions. Finally, on the top I put the students video with the green ladder and green background. In WeVideo, it should look something like this...

I converted the video edit into a template which made it really easy to share with my younger students for them to simply add and edit their own recording.

Once I published the video, I have that found that the easiest way to share it is as a .GIF file. My favourite place for this is ezgif.com as I can convert my mp4 file to a GIF file completely in Google Chrome.

Finally, for me, the easiest way to share it with their families is via a QR Code that is linked to the .GIF file in Google Drive, which they can then stick in their School Diary. I do this in QRCode Monkey, which is great for creating personalised QR codes.

The first challenge was figuring out the layers... obviously, there is a background, a subject, the snow falling, and the foreground. So, I started experimenting and eventually my WeVideo timeline looked a bit like this...

Basically, I had to create a composition in Google Drawings, and then duplicate it and add a green mask where I wanted my snow and subject to appear. I found a beautiful Snow Globe in freepik.com, and a cool Gingerbread decoration for the background in pngtree.comClick on either image below to make a copy and feel free to use it for your own Christmas Video project.

Once you've created the composition, all you need to do is add snow and film your students in front of a green screen and add it to your timeline...

As with my other video projects, I prefer to convert the video to a GIF file as they're generally easier to open and share. My favourite GIF converter is EZGIF.com as I can do it all from Chrome. Then I share with the students' families by QR code which I create at QR Code Monkey, as it allows me to personalise the colours, style and add an image...

One of the projects that I have started this year at school is a weekly news programme with my students from 6º Primaria. Every week I have tried to cover some of the events going on at the school and then each week I ask for help from a few students to film it.

The students have responded really positively, and each week more and more students are volunteering to help me. The perfect tool for making each News Bulletin has been WeVideo... in the 1st week I created a template for the news programme with school logo, title sequences and backgrounds which are all included in the WeVideo media library. Therefore, each week I only need to add the footage of the student reporter and the activity that we're covering.

G-Suite for Education makes the whole process really easy as I can begin the News programme script in Docs on Monday and collaborate with other teachers or students about what is going on. I can also easily share photos and videos of the different activities with whoever I need to through Drive. Then, to put it all together and share it with my students and their families, I have put it all into a Google Sites that also allows me to share additional information, extra photos and interesting links.

Since the GEG Spain event that I attended in Valencia in May, I've learnt an enormous amount about how to use WeVideo in my classes, and so I decided to prepare my own workshop.

Before my own workshop, I also attended Javier Simón's workshop, "OK Google, ¿Hablamos?" which gave me some really cool and interesting ideas about how to use Google Assistant with my students. I have a Google Home Mini myself, but I never could have imagined how it could be used in the classroom.

Javier Simón - "OK Google, ¿Hablamos?"

Once I arrived at the venue, I was also informed that my workshop was going to be live streamed via YouTube. Even though this made me a little bit more nervous about presenting my workshop, it was nice to know that my family and friends would be able to watch it at home.

I tried to structure my workshop, so that I could adequately describe how useful it can be in the classroom, but also giving the participants enough time to try it out. I took as many of my video and green screen resources with me as I could, for everybody to try out some chroma keying tricks.

I received a lot of positive feedback and I think that everyone that attended enjoyed the experience, but more importantly left with some ideas about how to use video with their own classes.

It was a great experience and a wonderful opportunity to meet so many enthusiastic and dedicated educators.

So, for Halloween this year I wanted to do something different... and with my green screen studio I had the perfect opportunity...

Headless students! It was really easy to do, and the kids had great fun doing it as well. This is how I did it... first you need a few green objects. I used the green wall in my classroom for the background, a green t-shirt to cover the head of student 1, and a green sheet to cover the body of student 2. It should look a bit like this...

Once I had filmed all of the students I used WeVideo to edit... I was able to colour key all of the green out of the video and then add a halloween background. WeVideo has a huge amount of halloween stock images and videos in its essentials library to choose from. To repeat the process was really easy, as WeVideo allows me to create a template which means that I just have to change the green screen layer in each edit...

I decided to convert the video files to GIF to make them easier to share. My preferred tool for this is ezgif.com It's really easy to use, plus I can upload, convert, edit and download, all within Google Chrome.

And then to share the GIFs with the families I used QR codes with a link to the GIF file in Google Drive. At QR-Code Monkey I could personalise the image with Halloween colours and a Happy Halloween image, to look something like this...

I printed and laminated the QR code and put it in their school diary for their parents to scan, see and download.